How do we save the world? By shopping of course! What should it be today? A little poverty alleviation mixed with women’s issues and clean water? There you go…
Taken from ethicalsuperstore
I’m not throwing the first stone. Consumer engagement might be the first step to a better array of goods (I’m a keen “no animal testing” shopper myself), but still I can’t help finding this list somehow bizarre…
Yesterday I attended David Levy’s talk about his new book “Love and Sex with Robots“. Levy sketches a not-so-near future scenario (40 years ahead) in which we will share our lives with highly intelligent, partly conscious and stunningly humanoid looking robots, who will not only be our servants and labourers, but also our companions, lovers and friends.
Although I thought his view on the potential of robots as being enhanced sex toys to be very limiting, I found his argumentation quite interesting (and one might say, he has a point since every new technology is always used for sexual matters as soon as invented, n’est pa?).
To me, the fist part of the talk was the most interesting one, when he went into detail about his arguments.
Why shouldn’t we fall in love with robots at some point in the future, if we already happily make our pets parts of our families? They sleep in our beds, we feed them high quality pet food, we take them to best vet available and spare no costs to keep them happy and alive as long as possible. Love and affection with pets, Levy says, is the first step on the ladder to love a robot.
The next step were the virtual pets of the 90s, Tamagotchis, Furbies and the like. He had some amazing examples of how far the affection for a virtual pet can go. Most of them were from Japan, e.g. when a lady in an airplane was asked to switch off her Tamagotchi, but she refused to “kill” her pet and was finally forced to go back to the gate. In Israel some people started a discussion whether or not it was legitimate to care for your Tamagotchi on a Sabbath. The matter was finally brought to a rabinian court, it’s supporters arguing that the Jewish belief goes against killing a living creature on a Sabbath, so it just had to be ok to “use” your Tamagotchi. But the Rabbis had no heart for the virtual pet and decided it had to be left unattended. Considering that a Tamagotchi, which is basically an egg-shaped bit of plastic, could cause such a stirr some 1o years ago, what will happen if our virtual pets become more humanoid, perfect replicas of ourselves?
Another argument for using robots as sexual partners is the surrogacy idea. Levy pointed out the “Sex surrogacy” movement in the US, which had its peak in the 1908s. The idea being a rather “hands on” help for people with psycho-sexual disorders. As a form of active therapy, the surrogates agree to have sex with the patients. So why shouldn’t robots do the deal in the future?
And as one would expect, there are some weird existing examples from Japan and South Korea that stand proof for love sex and affection with dolls. The “doll no mori” (forrest of dolls) rental service of upmarket rubber dolls, which started out a few years ago and obviously turned into a great financial success having about 40 franchises in Japan today. And a doll brothel concept in South Korea, where people rent a room with doll (instead of a view), which has been invented due to the new restricted prostitution laws.
Looking into the development of AI systems, we can see forms of therapy now, like the “Beating the Blues” program developed at Kings College London to help people with depression and anxiety. Levy argues that if we manage to implement that sort of AI into robots we will have articifical partners who are really understanding, supporting, giving us exactly the psychological feedback that we need to fall in love with them.
He refers to an analysis he did in the beginning of his book where he identified about 12 main reasons for why people fall in love with each other. He said if we manage to implement these into robots we can make the illusion work.
(Now I’m really curious what those reasons are…)
In the second half of the talk it was all about those rather fantastic, convincingly humanoid, intelligent robots we’ll have around us and the ethical issues needing to be solved…but for my taste that’s way too Sci-Fi to be an interesting scenario to spend time thinking about.
Exactitudes is an amazing photography project by Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek. Both have been taking photos of street stereotypes, portraying both the desire for uniformity (belonging to a street culture) and desire of individualism (adding their own interpretation of the former). The project makes me think about our notion of individualism and whether we are in fact as individual as we think. We are just animals after all…..and what is my stereotype?
Exactitudes is currently on show at the Selfridges department store on Oxford Street, Ultralounge exhibition space on Lower Ground floor. Running until April 20th.
Recently I had the chance to see a presentation of “The Screening” by Ariane Michel at Tate Modern. In Ariane’s work “the animal is an object of the study of the motif . The beast is a control lever for the sound and the image.”
The main part of the project “The Screening” is a charming film (shown at Tate) in which an invited audience is confronted with the nature and the wild animals around them in a European forest at night. In the art piece itself, this film is then shown to a similar audience in a similar situation. As she describes it in her own words “…they saw each other: depicting the situation experienced from the viewpoint of the natural wild world, the film is an endless duplication, a mise en abyme”.
Quote:
The Quantum Sleeper is a bed that hermetically seals itself as you sleep to protect you from “Bio-Chemical terrorist attack,” “natural disaster,” “kidnappers/stalkers” (only those who don’t possess a forklift, surely) and affords “Bulletproof ‘Saferoom’ protection.”
via boingboing
via notcot.org
Private View: Monday 29 January, 6:30-9PM
Exhibition Open: 29 January - 7 February 2008
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore
SW7 2EU
www.design-interactions.rca.ac.uk
